ripple 🌊

A JAX-based package for differentiable gravitational-wave waveform generation

ripple is a JAX-based package for differentiable gravitational-wave waveform generation. By implementing waveform models as differentiable JAX functions, ripple enables gradient-based inference and runs natively on GPU, making it well-suited for use within modern probabilistic inference pipelines such as Jim.

Supported waveforms:

• TaylorF2 — fast post-Newtonian waveform, aligned spins, tidal-capable
• IMRPhenomXAS — aligned-spin binary black holes
• IMRPhenomXPHM — precessing spins with higher-order modes
• IMRPhenomXAS_NRTidalv3 — tidal corrections for binary neutron star mergers
• IMRPhenomXP_NRTidalv3 — precessing spins with tidal corrections
• SineGaussian — time-domain burst waveform
• PulsarSignal — continuous-wave signal from a spinning neutron star
• etc.

See the Waveform Catalogue for the full list of supported waveforms.

For a quick introduction, see the Quick Start guide.

Installation

The simplest way to install ripple is through pip:

pip install rippleGW

This will install the latest stable release and its dependencies. ripple is built on JAX. By default, this installs the CPU version of JAX. If you have an NVIDIA GPU, install the CUDA-enabled version:

pip install rippleGW[cuda]

If you want to install the latest version of ripple, you can clone this repo and install it locally:

git clone https://github.com/GW-JAX-Team/ripple.git
cd ripple
pip install -e .

We recommend using uv to manage your Python environment. After cloning the repository, run uv sync to create a virtual environment with all dependencies installed.

Origins

ripple was originally developed as tedwards2412/ripple by Thomas Edwards and others. The original repository is no longer actively maintained; this fork is the active continuation of the project.

Attribution

If you use ripple in your research, please cite the accompanying paper:

@article{Edwards:2023sak,
    author = "Edwards, Thomas D. P. and Wong, Kaze W. K. and Lam, Kelvin K. H. and Coogan, Adam and Foreman-Mackey, Daniel and Isi, Maximiliano and Zimmerman, Aaron",
    title = "{Differentiable and hardware-accelerated waveforms for gravitational wave data analysis}",
    eprint = "2302.05329",
    archivePrefix = "arXiv",
    primaryClass = "astro-ph.IM",
    doi = "10.1103/PhysRevD.110.064028",
    journal = "Phys. Rev. D",
    volume = "110",
    number = "6",
    pages = "064028",
    year = "2024"
}